To Defy the Stars
by CourtJester
Summary: Picks up immediately on the heels of "To Burn the Horizon." Read first if you haven't. The battle for Earth is over, but with two Avengers missing and the world in chaos, it's up to Tony and company to figure out what comes next. On how even small choices can carry enormous consequences, and how things aren't always how they seem. FrostIron. [ON HIATUS]
1. Prologue: No Beginning No end

A/N: And we're back. If you haven't read "To Burn the Horizon," this will not make a lot of sense. If you have, strap in. Enjoy.

**Prologue: "No beginning. No end. Return to whiteness."**

In the beginning, as is often the case, there was peace.

Peace, however, is a not a natural state for this particular universe. Any why should it be? The universe is a volatile thing, a thing of ceaseless change, a thing stretching out with mighty fingers to create more and more of itself all the time.

Its inhabitants, being made of the same universe-stuff, are filled with the same impulses: to move, to change, to grow, to take, to _conquer_.

That is how the relative peace on a little blue planet was shattered.

That was the beginning.

But this not the end. No, that will still come – as it always does – in a cloud of ash and earth and that deep, resounding silence.

No, this is the middle.

This is _between_.

This is when choices begin to carry weight, when mistakes begin to compound, when paths begin to line up, when things are given a moment to breathe before building to that one, last breathless end.

xXx

_This is between:_

_Somewhere...anywhere...nowhere..._

_Somewhere neither light or dark. Somewhere only gray._

"Am I alive?"

_A green-gold-dark sound of a voice, his own, he thinks, echoes through the gray._

"Am I dead?"

("We're neither.")

_Black-red voice above-around, booming and whispering, outside and inside, everywhere and nowhere, black and red on gray._

("You're drifting again.")

"What?"

_Floating formless in the gray. Not a bad way to go, all things considered. Caught between. Maybe alive, maybe dead, maybe neither, maybe it doesn't matter. Comfortable here: painless and weightless and thoughtless._

"Dead. Alive. Dead? Alive?"

("We are neither. Trust me, Loki. I know a thing or two about the dead. For starters, if we were dead – really dead – we would not be _here_.")

_A single word like a hook, tugging him away from the comfort-haze._

"No."

("Loki.")

_Loki_._ That word. A hook with familiar barbs._

"I am Loki."

("Yes, I believe we established that.")

_Red-black boom-whisper from close by_. _Vapor presence. Someone else._

"If I am Loki, who are _you_?"

("You don't remember me. That explains a great deal. We've met before, you know. Or...? Ah. No, no, we have not. Not in this when, not yet. I am Mephisto.")

_Red skin bleached near-pink by brilliant tendril of white. A bearded face twisted into an eternal agony-howl. A slow-creep of memory, like water seeping through cracks in rock._

"Mephisto."

("Yes.")

"I know of you. You rule Hell, do you not?"

("My Hell, yes.")

"Where are we?"

("I was hoping you might have some idea. Last I recall, I tried to take you through the portal. Next I knew, here I was.")

_Stirring of anger: an iron poker jabbing at old coals, seeking to reignite. Sparks in the gray as memory flares alight._

_Raising the Wizard's Eye to the tear..._

_Something slamming into him, grabbing hold of him..._

_Being torn apart, burned alive, consumed by pure white fire..._

"It was a tear, you utter fool. You tore holes in the walls between dimensions. You very nearly caused the end of existence!"

("I planned to stop it before it got to that point. Contrary to what you might think, I am well aware of the consequences of meddling with dimensional magics.")

"Then why did you do it?"

("To get your attention. But that is neither here nor there. Where are we?")

"I would not have asked you that had I known the answer."

_No eyes to see, no hands to feel, no body to move, no mouth with which to speak, nor ears with which to hear. Formless and shapeless._

_How, then, to explain the sense of _thereness_?_

_To explain the sense of the other's thereness?_

_Illusion? Hallucination?_

"Is this real?"

("Yes, it's real. You and I, we are trapped here. Wherever here is.")

"And you are certain this is not death."

("Yes.") _A vicious snarl, frustrated black. _("I rule Hell, my soul is bound to Hell, and if I were dead, I would be there now. This is not Hell. This is worse.")

_Gray. Endless, limitless gray._

_Between light and dark. Between alive and dead. Between everything and nothing. Between here and there. Between beginning and ending._

_This is between._

"This is Limbo."

("And finally we've caught up. Yes, Loki. Yes, this is Limbo. Welcome to it.")

_Welcome to it._

_That's not much of a comfort, really, not in this unholy stillness._

_Not at all._

xXx

_This is between_:

Odin, All-Father, looks down on his wife, a frail, fragile figure caught somewhere between waking and nightmares.

"Any change, All-Father?" a quiet voice asks.

Odin does not look around. "No," he says simply. "I am afraid she will soon be lost to us."

xXx

_This is between_:

Tony Stark, Iron Man, says, "We need to find Bruce and Tasha."

"We need to go help out first," Captain America says. They are still standing on a rooftop over which a dimensional tear had been closed not five minutes ago. Cap isn't looking up, though; he's looking down at explosions still happening below. "Looks like they're getting overrun." He glances at Tony, though, that same hope, that same conflict in his eyes. "Unless you have some idea where they are...? Because if you do, we'll go find them."

"I – no," Tony admits. "But the guys that took them, if they were Osborn's men..."

"Do you think they'd be somewhere in the city?"

Tony looks around, shakes his head. "Probably not. If they had a helicopter, they could have gotten out by now. Still..."

Cap picks up his shield. "Which means they could be anywhere by now."

"Yeah," Tony says. Or dead. "Still..."

"I know, but if you don't know, then we need to take care of what we _can_ right now."

Thor, a forbidding presence at Cap's shoulder, folds his arms over his massive chest. "He is right, Man of Iron. Would you let thousands die while we selfishly look for but two? Our brother and sister, true, but sometimes we must put aside our own desires for the good of many."

_Our own desires_.

Tony does not doubt even for a moment what _that_ means.

But in the thinned press of Thor's lips and the vague frown and the flickering of tired eyes, there the same conflict.

Steve says, "Let's just finish this here. Go help them. Do this one thing. And then we'll go look for them."

Tony wants to argue, he really does, but in the end, hearing another explosion somewhere below, hearing some tiny screams from down there, he can't.

He nods and says, "Okay."

xXx

Trouble is, the alien forces had a six hour window between the time the tear opened and the time it closed. Which means they had time to scatter across the planet. Which means a lot of them were well clear of the tear when it started pulling things back through.

Which means cities all over the world get bombed and towns outside of New York get overrun by hoards of alien soldiers. (They don't stop just because Thanos is no longer calling the shots.)

Which meant a "do this one thing" sprint turns into a five-day mop-up marathon not only for the Avengers but for military forces all over the world.

They win, eventually, and a lot of that is down to the presences of Thor's warriors, whose tireless determination helps boost spirits everywhere, and the three Avengers, who keep fighting through fatigue and mounting injuries and damaged armor – and Tony constantly having to ask Thor for a recharge, and Thor always looking a little too amused when he sends a bolt of lightning Tony's way – and the gnawing fear for their missing friends.

(That fear is just a little muted after Tony witnesses an alien soldier coldly shoot a small girl, and a mother with her infant son. Just a little.)

When "this one thing" is done, Thor sends his warriors – along with a bound Thanos – back to Asgard.

Afterward, three filthy, exhausted, dinged and dented Avengers stand alone and silent in a dusk-lit field somewhere in Pennsylvania.

In a bit, they will return to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s temporary headquarters to sleep and eat and figure out their next move.

(_To figure out if Bruce and Tasha are even still alive,_ Tony thinks but doesn't say. Five days makes a difference. But he tells himself it was a choice between those two and the thousands they saved. Doesn't make it any easier to swallow. But.)

But for now, the three damaged heroes stand in a hazy field somewhere between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, catching their breath.

xXx

_This is between_:

While heroes are collecting their breath, others are waiting to make their moves.

In a nondescript warehouse somewhere in California, Norman Osborn stands in a makeshift observation room, studying a silently screaming green monster on a computer monitor. The monster is locked in a clear cage. Around the top of the cage are small black discs filled with the radioactive material that is keeping the monster from reverting back.

It's a frightening sight.

"Well?" Osborn rasps at the doctor beside him.

"It's early so far, sir," the doctor, a calm little man with thick glasses, replies, "but I believe I've managed to extract a clear enough sample of the radiation in his blood that I can isolate the trigger."

"Excellent," Osborn says. A tall man in a dark suit, he bends forward again to study the monitor again. "How long until you know for sure?"

"Tomorrow at the latest. If I'm right, and assuming you're able to procure the materials I need, I can begin testing by the end of the week. Am-? You sill want me to use the woman as the test subject, yes?"

"Yes, I do," Osborn says. He straightens, adjusts his tie, and steps away from the desk. "If you'll excuse me, I must be going. Keep me informed."

"Yes, sir."

Osborn leaves the office, but pauses a short way down the hall.

He leans back against a wall and rubs tired eyes.

"Are you sure this is the right way to do this?" he says, squeezing his eyes shut.

"_I have not been wrong so far,_" the Goblin tells him. "_Look around you: the world is in chaos, there is a power void right now, and if you succeed with this experiment, you will be in the perfect position to step into it. You wanted the power. Now you can step in and grab it._"

"But Stark is still alive."

"_Yes, and he will be coming for you. I told you not to tell him about the stolen reactor plans_."

"I know. I know, I shouldn't have, but..."

"_You had to rub it in his face – that you knew more about what was happening in his company than he did."_

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"_He's a risk to you. He will be coming for you. They all will. That is why you must-_"

A voice slides over the Goblin's. "Mr. Osborn? Is everything all right?"

Osborn opens his eyes, and as he does he realizes he's been standing with his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stop a nosebleed. He lowers his hand and glances around.

A brown-haired young man in a gray shirt and black slacks stands nearby, watching in what appears to be concern. He's of the new assistants at the facility, who is also filling in as one for Osborn himself until things settle down.

"Yes, yes," Osborn says pushing away from the wall. "I was just, ah, gathering my thoughts. Is the car ready?"

"Yes, sir," the young man replies. "It's just outside."

"Good, thank you." Osborn starts to turn, but pauses. Something familiar about the boy. "It was Dallas, right?"

The young man nods. "Yes, sir. Like the city."

"And you-? You're Stark's ex-assistant, are you not? The one who showed us his security system?"

"Yes, sir," the young man says. "That was me."

"Good work." Osborn nods and starts off down the hall. "Keep your phone on at all times, Dallas. I will have further need of you."

"I will do that, Mr. Osborn."

As he steps out of the facility, Norman Osborn hears the Goblin whisper deep in the back of his mind, "_Later, you and I will talk. I have a plan._"

xXx

_I am becoming_  
_In the realm of unknown_  
_Beyond unending_  
_Time_  
_Space_  
_And form  
_-Lunatic Soul, "Otherwhere"

A/N: Special thanks to DragonFlight20 for sending me the backup copy of this! You are a lifesaver! Thanks for reading.


	2. And I feel this coming over like a storm

A/N: In which a lot of talking happens, and very little else. Enjoy.

1. **"I feel this coming over like a storm again now."**

After running on a minimum of sleep and at a full adrenaline burn for nearly five days, most people will crash down _hard_ at the first opportunity.

The human body is just not wired to handle that much stress for such a long period of time.

(Neither is the Thor's non-human body, no matter _what_ what says. Better-able to handle it, Tony supposes, better stamina, but still, the big guy is still yawning the same massive, jaw-cracking yawns as Cap and Tony himself by the time they make it back to the warehouse S.H.I.E.L.D. had converted into its temporary base of operations on the ground.)

Tony is not an exception to this.

For him, though, the trouble is seldom _getting_ to sleep. No, when his mind is finally exhausted-blank enough to shut itself off, as it is at the end of that fifth and final horrible dragging day of battle, sleep doesn't so much as find him as reach up with its giant sandman's hand and drag him down into the pit. As soon as he closes his eyes, he's gone.

Staying there, though, that's always been the tough part.

If he isn't thrown ass-first out of some nightmare, then he'll snap awake with some new idea burning away in the back of his brain or with some old problem gnawing away, ratlike, in some dark corner.

This particular morning, some four-and-a-half hours after he'd dropped down into a stupefied, exhausted slumber, it's something else that wakes him up.

It's a question.

He blinks semi-awake in some dark room – a tiny office or something, he thinks he remembers, where they'd shoved aside a desk to make room for this hard-as-a-rock cot – and mutters, "Where is it?"

_Where is it?_

It's a question and some strange feeling that he's either forgotten something or misplaced it, and that he really ought to go try to find it – whatever it is, wherever it is.

(_He's pretty sure he'll know it when he sees it_.)

This isn't the first time in the past few days he's had this feeling; it's just there hasn't been any time to go looking.

Now, now there is.

And so, still exhausted and half-asleep, he tosses the thin blanket off of him, rises on legs that feel like like a couple of warped and weak sticks, and shuffles out of the room.

Whatever it is, he'll find it.

xXx

Trouble is, he can't seem to.

He'd been sure when he'd pulled open this door at the end of this hallway, it would be there. But so far, all he's found are mops and rags and a bucket and a whole lot of bottles.

"Where the hell is it?" he mutters, shoving aside a couple of jugs of some kind of cleaner.

"Mr. Stark?" a quiet voice says behind him.

Tony ignores it. Shoves aside a couple of old jars. Keeps digging.

"_Mr. Stark." _Louder this time, more insistent. "What are you doing?"

A hand falls on his shoulder.

The touch is like getting hit with a defibrillator paddle for all that it startles Tony clean out of his skin. He yelps, jumps, spins, wide- and wild-eyed, his heart in his throat.

And for a confused second, as he looks around, he finds he has no earthly idea where he is: gray hallway, half-lit, cold white tile under his feet, lots of closed doors.

_What the hell...?_

Sees a face in front of him, though, and it snaps everything back into focus:

Agent Maria Hill, acting S.H.I.E.L.D. Director standing a few steps away, hands on her hips: a smallish woman dressed in rumpled dark clothes, her brown hair pulled back into a loose tail, her tired eyes fixed on him with both alarm and concern.

"Uh, hi," Tony says, passing an unsteady hand through his hair.

"Good morning," she replies, and her tone is light enough, even as she frowns. "So, um. It's three in the morning, Mr. Stark. Mind telling me what you're doing raiding the janitor's closet? Did you need to clean something up?"

"The-?" Tony turns back to the open closet, blinks at it, and then turns back toward her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a mess of cleaning supply bottles on the floor, with mops and an old garbage can lined up along the wall at his left.

Okay, yeah, seriously, _what the hell_?

(Looking for something, knows that, _remembers_ that, but why the hell would he have left it in the janitor's closet, doesn't make sense, none of it makes sense...)

"Huh," he says, blinking. "I – yeah, no idea. Must've been sleepwalking."

"Sleepwalking."

"Yeah. Let's go with that." Tony glances to his left. "I'll just head back to bed now."

Her mouth quirking, Agent Hill says, "If you don't mind, I think I'll escort you."

Tony flashes a reflexive grin and says, without thinking, "Of course I don't mind. In fact-"

"I would choose your next words carefully, Mr. Stark," Agent Hill says, eyebrows arched. "I have the power to have you cuffed, gagged, and restricted to your room."

"Is that a threat?" he retorts. Mostly out of a very bad habit. "Or a suggestion?"

Her expression locks down in a hurry, like all the muscles in her face go tight at once, and the look she gives him then is eerily reminiscent of Pepper's trademark 'you're a pig, Tony,' looks. "You need to stop now, Mr. Stark," she says, all professional cool.

Tony waves her off. "You don't need to escort me. I know the way."

"I'll go with you anyway," she says. "Better safe than sorry." With that, she turns to head up the drab, empty gray hallway. The sound of her quiet footsteps seems to echo all around her.

Tony falls into step beside her, and as his bare feet touch the cool tile, it occurs to him that not only is he barefoot, but he's also not wearing pants. All he has on is the black tee shirt and boxer shorts – _thank God_ – a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had dug up for him at some point last night.

Because apparently the morning can't get any more weird.

He shakes his head and glances over at Agent Hill. She's staring ahead, dour and hard-eyed, and _there_, and Tony says, "What are _you_ doing up at – what'd you say it was? Three? – at three in the morning?"

"I haven't been to bed," she admits. "Too much to do."

"Like escorting me back to bed?"

"Like handling a call from one of my agents wondering why you were out of bed. What were you looking for, anyway?"

"No idea," Tony says. Lacking any pockets to stuff his hands into, he settles for crossing his arms. It's a little cool in the hall. "I don't even remember getting out of bed."

"So you really were sleepwalking."

"Apparently. It's a thing I do sometimes." Because he figures it'll be easier for her to accept than he'd woken up with this weird impulse to go looking – in his underwear, no less – for some unknown...something that he wasn't even sure he'd lost in the first place. Easier for him to accept, too. "So, hey, we never did get a chance to ask you – what's the latest on Fury? I heard you found the car."

She nods. "We did. The GPS unit actually survived the explosion. We found the two agents who were with the director near the car. We found his phone, too. Part of it, anyway. No sign of him. And," she adds, as she pauses near Tony's door, "when I say no sign, I mean no sign. No clothing, no body parts, not one thing."

"So odds are he survived."

"That's what we think," she says, "but I've had a handful agents combing the area for the past couple days, and so far we haven't found anything. Now that all the aliens... Now that you guys stopped the aliens, I'll be able to pull some agents to search in earnest."

"Good." Tony leans back against the wall across from his door. "I hope you find him."

"So do I," she says, shaking her head. "We've lost so much already..."

"Yeah." All of a sudden his heart is pounding again, and his hands are feeling shaky. Dread in his stomach like a stone, but this is a question he needs to ask because _speaking of losses: _"So listen," he says, running a dry tongue over drier lips, "Cap had you guys escort Pepper Potts out of New York the day before all this hit. Any chance you can find out where she is for me?"

Agent Hill's gaze snaps up from the floor, and she actually smiles. It chases away some of the shadows from her face, makes her look younger and very pretty. "I took care of the arrangements for that myself, actually. She's in Malibu, and as of this morning she was doing just fine. We've got an eye on her. If you want, we can probably get you in touch with her."

Tony lets his head fall back, closes his eyes, breathes out a quiet sigh. "Yeah, at some point," he says, and it feels as if an elephant has stepped off his chest. "Thank you."

Because at least there's that.

"You're welcome," she says, the smile still in her voice. "Good night, Mr. Stark."

"Good night."

He doesn't even hear her walk away.

xXx

Tony half-expects that odd insistence to keep him awake, but between sheer exhaustion and that sweeping relief, he finds there's not much room for anything else.

His mind goes quiet again, and he's asleep almost before his head hits the pillow.

xXx

When he wakes up for good, another four or five hours have slipped on by, and daylight is leeching in through the room's lone tiny window. He's still tired – needs another solid week of sleep like that – but not tired enough to ignore the little voice in the back of his mind reminding him that Bruce and Tasha are still missing.

He can sleep after they've found-

(_-it-_)

-their missing friends.

So, after downing a couple of painkillers – compliments of a S.H.I.E.L.D. medic who, on examining him last night, had shaken his head and wondered aloud how the hell Tony was even _vertical_, what with all the bruises, tears, and various other injuries he'd sustained over the past five days – and dragging himself through another shower, he pulls on more S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued clothes and hobbles off to find Steve and Thor.

Just down the hall from the row of little offices that had been converted to makeshift sleeping areas is a slightly larger room that had been designated a conference room. As approaches it, Steve walks out.

Like Tony, he's dressed in all black, and like Tony he's a beaten-up mess: cuts atop welts atop bruises on his face and arms, a mild hitch in his step, stiffness in his posture. But, again, like Tony (and Thor, for that matter), he had avoided major injury. And when he glances over, it's with bright, alert blue eyes. The smile he offers, while weary, seems genuine enough.

"Oh, there you are," he says. "I was just coming to see if you were up."

"I am," Tony says. "Work to do and all."

"Yeah," Steve says. "Listen, I need to run down and talk to the...to, um, Director Hill for a minute. Thor should be along here shortly, and I guess we'll just go from there, huh?"

"I guess we will," Tony says. "Oh, hey, would you do me a favor and ask her if they got a work area set aside for me? The tools I asked for, too." So he can hammer out a couple of the worst dents in the suit. What he really needs to fix the suit is in California, but he can't see himself getting out thataway until after they've found Hulk and Widow, so a few quick and dirty repairs will have to suffice. "But hurry, huh? We really-"

"I know we do," Steve says over him, as he turns to limp away. "I'll make it quick."

Tony heads into the little conference room: it's just a small, square little room with a table in the middle, few folding chairs scattered around, and a couple of low windows on the back wall. There's some fruit and bagels on the table, along with a pot of coffee and a couple mugs.

After pouring himself a cup and snagging one of the bagels, he wanders over to one of the room's two small windows and begins to mull over the problem at hand.

Outside, everything is just gray: the sun is hidden behind a dense cloud-curtain, the street below is eerily empty and still, and all the buildings nearby appear to have been abandoned. Likely have, now that he thinks about it: the building here is close enough that he can see the still-smoldering ruins of New York City outlined against the horizon like some kind of jagged scar.

(Not Stark Tower, though; no, that had been torn down to its foundations, not even a single wall left, and that was a bitter pill to swallow.)

The quiet now is strange, but not unwelcome given what they have ahead of them.

Given no other clues or leads, they'd asked S.H.I.E.L.D. to help them track down Norman Osborn. JARVIS, too, but tracking anybody down right now is like trying to find a needle in hundred-foot haystack, what with so many of the major communications networks knocked out when New York fell.

And, yeah, _fuck Thanos_.

But Osborn's out there, somewhere, Tony's sure of it, and so are Bruce and Tasha.

_Out there somewhere. They have to be._

_(It has to be._)

_They are._

_(It is-_)

"-out there?"

A deep, quiet voice slides through Tony's thoughts like a scalpel, and he darts a quick glance over his shoulder.

Thor is standing in the doorway. In his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued black pants and black tee shirt, he looks strange, almost faded. With his face a lumped-up mass of bruises and welts, his arms covered in cuts and bruises, and with the dark fatigue-smudges under his eyes, he looks nothing like a god and everything like an ordinary man who has been dragged facedown through hell.

Tony, who himself can barely lift his arm and who had required an extra twenty minutes to limp and hobble his way through his morning routine, supposes he can sympathize.

The last five days have been pretty rough on all of them.

Thor's looking on with something like expectation, and Tony realizes he has no idea what Thor had said. "Did you say something? Sorry, I was..." He gestures at the window with the hand holding a now-empty coffee mug.

"Yes, I know," Thor says. "You seemed absorbed. I asked what it was you saw out there."

"Uh, nothing, actually," Tony says. "It's pretty quiet. I was actually just thinking." He makes a show of looking at the hallway behind Thor. "Steve not back yet?"

Thor limps into the room and takes a seat at the table, saying, as he does, "It does not appear so." He motions for Tony to join him. "It is fortunate. I wish to speak to you before he returns."

"All right." Tony lowers himself into the nearest unoccupied chair, tilts back, and folds his hands over his arc reactor. "So what's up?"

The big man, all guarded blue eyes and an unreadable expression, says, "I think it best to say this straight out, so I will." Which is a statement that makes something in Tony just ball up. But it's nothing compared to what follows, as Thor lowers his voice and asks, "There was something between you and Loki, was there not?"

"Something." Tony shifts, scratches at his arc reactor. "Guess that depends on your definition of 'something.'"

"You lay with him."

Like it's not even a question.

…_dammit_.

Tony grimaces, sets the empty coffee cup down, and chuckles weakly.

Because _of course_ Thor is going to bring this up now, when they have so much other stuff in front of them.

"Huh, well," he says at last, "that was, uh, that was certainly a direct way to put it. You guys really don't believe in building up to things, do you? That a thing with your people?"

In no way, shape, or form is he thinking of those first hard, stolen kisses in an alleyway once upon a time. Not a bit.

"We do not mince words when we do not have to," Thor replies. He sits back and folds his arms over his chest. "You did not answer the question."

"...right." Not that Tony's panicking, exactly, but, Jesus, what's he supposed to say here? "Was there a question? Didn't sound like it to me."

"There was." After a silent beat: "You are avoiding it."

"I am not."

Thor lifts his chin, raises eyebrows.

Tony, thinking of unexpected lightning bolts coming at him, shifts and clears his throat. "Okay, maybe I am. But I think – and correct me if I'm wrong here – I think you already know the answer. In fact, I know you know. And you know I know you know. And I..." He shakes his head. "I'm confusing myself here. Point is, you already know. So that means we've said everything we need to."

There's a sudden faraway look in Thor's eyes when he says, "Loki used to use that tactic on me when we were children. He would speak to confuse me in order to avoid answering for things he had done." Absent fondness in a small smile, and: "I stopped falling for that a long time ago. And he was much better at it."

_Was_.

Tony rises and returns to the window. Huh. If Loki as a kid was anything like Loki as an adult... "I bet," he says, his back to Thor. "So you know. How?"

"The lady Natasha brought it to my attention," Thor says. "The day you first told us that Loki had come to you, she told me she thought that something more had happened than you told us. I thought nothing of it until I saw you as you fought together, as you spoke together, and as you acted before he...fell. I did not know. I only guessed."

"Oh," is all Tony says.

After a long silence, he hears Thor stand up and move to stand beside him. "Tell me," Thor says, "did he come to you?"

Tony watches himself nod in the glass. Just beyond his reflection, there's no traffic, no pedestrians, nothing to break the empty monotony of the cityscape. "Yeah," he says, low and rough. There's no panic now; just resignation. "And I don't really want to talk about this, so let's just make this long story short, Point Break: it wasn't anything. He'd show up, it would happen, and he would leave. That's it. Yes, it was stupid, and you bet it was selfish, and, yeah, I probably should have said something. I didn't."

Thor glances over and away. "He did not force you?"

Frowning, Tony says, "What? No." And something in Thor's demeanor – that frown, mostly, which reminds Tony of the sullen rain clouds in the sky outside – leads Tony to ask, "Did you really think he _would_?"

"No." The word is the sharp snap of nearby thunder. "Of course not. Whatever has happened between us, Loki was – _is _– still my brother. I hoped he had not fallen so far that he would be capable of such a thing. Nor did I wish to think of you – _my friend _– falling prey."

"Oh." Tony lifts a hand and knocks a light fist against the glass, a gentle metronomic tap like steady heartbeat.

There's really nothing more he can or wants to say, so he doesn't say anything, just stands there tapping the glass while Thor stares down at the windowsill.

Finally, Thor shifts, glances up and says, "What I truly wish to know is this: You spoke the truth when you told Loki you would join him. You _say_ you did so because you planned to take the Eye from him, but if you and he were..."

"The words you're looking for are 'screwing around,'" Tony says, flat-voiced, his gaze sliding back out onto a dead gray sky. "It was only a few times, so don't make anything out of it. It didn't mean anything, and it sure as hell didn't change anything. Doesn't work like that."

A lot of words, truths half-believed, if at all. What he's been telling himself on those infrequent occasions he's had time to slow down and think about any of it. Thing is, he hasn't wanted to think about it, not at all, not really, because every time he does think about it that last, godawful moment comes to mind: Loki screaming as that white tendril burns him from the inside out.

Screaming and screaming, and then just nothing at all.

Best not to think about it at all. Best to let it go, to chalk it up to a moment of stupid self-indulgence that is now over and is something to move on from.

"It didn't mean anything," he says again. "And as far as what I said, yeah, it was because I wanted to get the Eye away from him. Had to, and you know that, too. But if I'd known that Mephisto guy was gonna go all _deus ex machina_ on us and take care of everything, I would have reconsidered. Because I knew it was a bad plan-"

_("I know this is a bad plan, but we have little time and I have nothing else.")_

"-but I didn't have anything else." He lets his hand fall away from the window. "It's kind of a moot point anyway, isn't it? This whole conversation is moot. He's gone. The Eye is gone. Everything's gone. What I did, I did. I know I shouldn't have, but it's too late to go back now. And, hell, like I said it didn't mean anything. It doesn't matter. What matters now is-"

"What do you mean 'it doesn't matter'?" a cold, low voice cuts him off from somewhere behind.

Both Thor and Tony wince as they look around.

Steve is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, a scowl cutting deep grooves in his face. And, huh, there's an angry red flush working its way up his neck.

"It doesn't matter if he was helping us or not," Steve says through his teeth. "The fact of the matter is, Loki was a wanted criminal – here and on Asgard. You knew that, and instead of turning him in, you 'screwed around' with him. What were you thinking, man? _Were _you thinking?"

The old man all over again, and Tony reacts almost without thinking: defenses go up, doors slam shut, and that fast, there's ice water in his veins.

"I was thinking 'oh, right there,' and 'do that again,' and 'god, don't stop,'" he says with a cutting smirk. "Oh, wait. Those might have been things I said. Maybe it was 'more' and 'harder' I was thinking. Mm. No. No, pretty sure I said that too." He pretends to consider the question further, then shrugs it off altogether. "Yeah, you know, I don't remember what I was thinking. Probably because it wasn't important."

Steve's face has gone tomato red, while Thor's has just gone blank.

"What I'm thinking right now," Tony says before either of them has a chance to recover, "is that we have two missing teammates and a missing S.H.I.E.L.D. director to find. I'm thinking an entire city got wiped off the map five days ago, which means there's a huge mess to clean up. I'm thinking I probably lost most of my employees and their families. I'm thinking I have a company I'm going to have to try to rebuild somehow, assuming there's even a country left to rebuild it in and assuming the world's economy doesn't just collapse completely. I'm thinking I lost my tower, I don't know where Pepper is, and all my spare suits are in California.

"I'm thinking if all you really want to do is waste your time telling me things I already know – like what a huge, disappointing, stupid, mistake I made – when it's already done, he's gone, and it's over, then be my guest. But while you're doing that, I'm going to be over here trying to think of ways to find our friends."

Steve, tall and lean and clean-cut, leans over a chair. It's a trick of the light, has to be, but all of a sudden he looks ten years older. "That's not fair," he says, tired blue eyes focused on Tony's. "You remember when made me choose between you and S.H.I.E.L.D.? You were mad at me for keeping things from you. You said you couldn't trust me. You said the same thing about Director Fury. Do you remember that Tony? Because I do. And now, here you are, keeping something even worse from us, and you're trying to tell me that I can't say the same thing to you? Because you don't think it's a 'big deal'? Well, I'm sorry, but I disagree."

"You can disagree all you want, Cap," Tony says, "but It's done. We have work to do."

"No," Steve says through his teeth, "you can't just push this aside." He shakes his head. "It comes down to trust. You say it didn't change anything. You say you were trying to stop him. I want to believe that, but I don't know if I can. I mean, Loki was-"

"My brother." This a low rumble from Thor, spoken with the quiet kind of finality that draws both Tony and Steve up short. Frown-shadowed blue eyes lock onto a spot on the wall behind Steve. "Loki was my brother, and now he is dead."

_My brother_.

Two simple words, full of a history that Tony can't even begin to imagine, and he actually winces. Feels, yet again, kind of like an asshole.

Wonders if _that's_ an Asgard thing, too, since Loki had the same ability to say the exact thing to make Tony feel like he'd stuffed his foot in his mouth.

Thor, leaning back against the windowsill, a big man all in black with eyes the color of storm-tossed oceans, says, "Our friends may yet be alive. We must all do what we can to find them."

Steve, still shamefaced, raises his head again, looks Thor in the eye, and says, "You're right. Hulk and Tasha need us. And Director Hill said she wanted to talk to us, so let's go."

He doesn't look at Tony once as he turns to lead the way out of the square little room.

Tony, following Thor, decides he doesn't really care:

For now, all that matters is that they find-

(_it_)

-their friends.

Everything else can wait.

xXx

Since Mr. Osborn is keeping a low profile for right now, his temporary assistant finds himself relegated to various administrative jobs around Mr. Osborn's facility – mostly the kind involving picking up supplies and running errands and cleaning up around the place.

Things he used to do for Mr. Stark when Mr. Stark was on one of his inventing binges.

It's scut work, but Dallas knows for sure it could have been a lot worse.

So he doesn't complain, not even when they tell him to go down and clean up the rooms where they're keeping the two "guests."

It hasn't been bad so far because the Hulk is never in his big clear cage when Dallas goes down to clean up all the broken furniture – two cots and a chair so far – and shredded blankets and things the Hulk throws all over the place. Also because Miss Romanov is unconscious whenever he's gone down to her tiny brick room to change the sheets on her bed (Mr. Osborn insists: he doesn't want their "guests" treated like prisoners, even though they're both locked up, which is kind of the definition of "locked up," not that Dallas is going to actually say so).

The third time Dallas walks by Chuck, the guard assigned to watch over Miss Romanov's room, with an armful of clean sheets and blankets, it isn't even a big deal.

Chuck, a big guy in a blue uniform and with huge, tattooed forearms that Dallas would swear on the Bible are bigger than his own legs, grins and says, "Oh, look, it's the cleaning fairy." He's sitting behind his desk, which is maybe twenty feet outside the door. There are three computer monitors set up on the all broadcasting the cameras they've got pointed on Miss Romanov inside.

Dallas just rolls his eyes and walks past.

The door is already unlocked. Dallas nudges it open and steps inside.

It really is just a room: a 10' white cinderblock square with a bed in one corner and-

"...who are you?"

"Wh-_whoa!_" Dallas lets out a truly undignified yelp and spins around, nearly dropping the sheets in surprise. "What the _hell..._?"

Miss Romanov is in her usual place: in a straight jacket, tied to a handcart, and chained to the wall. But instead of sagged back against the wall behind her, unconscious, she's wide awake and looking right at him.

"Chuck!" Dallas yells, backing off toward the door. "Hey, Chuck!"

"Shit sakes," he hears Chuck mutter from the hallway, and three second later, Chuck's at the door. "What's the problem?"

Dallas doesn't look around; he just points at Romanov and says, "She's awake. That's the problem. She isn't supposed to be."

"Chill the fuck out, Dallas," Chuck says. "Doc says they're gonna be testin' on her in the next few days. Gotta get all that sedative crap flushed outta her. Even if she got out of that coat and busted out of those chains, she's still got enough shit in her a five-year-old could take her down no sweat." He reaches over and drops a heavy hand on Dallas's shoulder. "So quit being a pussy. Do your maid thing."

"Fuck off," Dallas mutters. He sneaks another look at Romanov. She's watching him with calm, alert green-blue eyes in a way that sends icy fear crawling spider-like down his spine. "...yeah. Okay." He glances back at Chuck. "Go back to the desk. I got this."

"I'll be right outside the door, honey-bee. Scream if the scary lady scares you again." Chuck grins his crooked grin, pushes away from the door, and turns to saunter back down the hall.

"Prick," Dallas mutters after him. He sneaks another look at Romanov. "And you just fucking stay put."

This actually draws a snort out of her. "Where'm I gonna go?" she asks. Her voice is raspy, dry-sounding. She leans her head back and tilts it to one side. "You're just here to clean the room, right?"

"...yeah," he mutters, fiddling with the sheets. He feels all jangly, wired, and he scowls as he darts another fast look at her. "And, um. I probably shouldn't be talking to you. So please don't talk."

She chuckles outright this time. It's a harsh sound, low and husky, but still kind of pretty. "You don't need to be afraid of me, you know. Your friend out there was right. If you took all these straps off me, the only thing I would do is fall."

"I'm not afraid."

"Your hands are shaking," she says as her eyes drift closed. "It's okay. Do your job. Like your friend said, I'm no danger to you."

"He's not my friend," Dallas mutters. "And you don't scare me." He turns away from her and stalks over to the narrow cot, dumping the sheets and blanket on the floor beside it as he does. While he starts to strip away the old bedding off the cot, he keeps his back to her.

"So your name is Dallas," she says after a bit.

Dallas freezes in the act of wadding up the dirty pillow case. When he glances around, he sees her studying him, intense green-blue eyes in a pale, wan face. He looks away fast. "Don't talk to me."

"Interesting name. Like in Texas?"

He flinches just a bit, tries to cover it with an indifferent shrug. "I guess so, but it's not that interesting. It's a pretty common name. And, seriously, stop talking."

"There's no need to be rude," she says quietly. She sounds tired. "I was just going to say, I've heard that name before. It belonged to somebody who used to work for a friend of mine. The guy – this other Dallas – he disappeared one day. My friend was upset about that – he was worried that something very bad had happened to the guy. To this day my friend still doesn't know where he is. Sad story."

"...huh." Dallas keeps his focus on the task at hand, unfolding the blanket and setting it down over the sheet. "Your friend was upset?"

"Yeah. I was there. It was – well, my friend doesn't like to _show_ people, you know, but you could tell it hurt him. Not knowing. Of course, I don't know, maybe that's for the best. Sometimes knowing what really happened to somebody, finding out where they really went, is even worse."

"Yeah, I wouldn't know," Dallas mutters. He finishes tucking in the sheets and blanket. "But maybe your friend was some jerk who could never remember people's name. Maybe he stuck people with stupid nicknames. Maybe he never bothered to pick up the phone himself to let the guy know he wasn't fired."

"Maybe," Romanov says in her dusky rasp, "but the thing about my friend is he got very overwhelmed with things right about then. So many people – in his own company, in other companies, even in his personal life – were going out of their way to screw him over that he couldn't keep track of everything. Everyone. Not on purpose. It's just the way it happened."

Dallas keeps his back to her. He hadn't known about any of that. Not that it matters now, he guesses, because it's not like he can take back anything he did, but still...

_Still_...

Except it's too little too late, what's done is done and can't be undone, the past is past, and – now he's starting to sound like his mom, all full of stupid clichés.

_Hell_.

He straightens his shoulders and turns to look at Romanov: a hollow-faced woman with lank auburn hair; a slight, slender figure straitjacketed and chained to a dolly. It's hard to imagine her being a danger to anybody.

(Even harder to imagine what kind of experiments they're going to do to her. But.)

All of a sudden, he has no desire to be in this room anymore. "It's too bad things turned out the way they did for your friend," he says. "Now, I need to finish, and you need to stop talking."

"Dallas-"

"Shut _up_," he snaps, moving away. "Jesus."

It takes him maybe five minutes to finish making the bed and to run a broom over the floor. He doesn't look at her again, and she doesn't say anything else.

He gathers up the soiled sheets and the broom, and heads for the door. He's maybe two steps away when he hears her rasp, "My friend knew the guy's name, you know. I think my friend just liked the nickname better."

Dallas flicks a quick glance up at the camera over her head, then turns toward the door. "Well," he mutters, shrugging a shoulder, "maybe the guy liked it, too. But maybe he just liked his own name better."

He doesn't give her time to answer, just lowers his head and walks out.

xXx

After Dallas pulls the door closed behind him, he glances over toward Chuck's desk.

He pauses, startled, when he finds that Mr. Osborn himself is standing beside Chuck, watching.

Dallas hadn't even known the man was in the building.

Mr. Osborn straightens away from the desk. He's tall and thin, Mr. Osborn is, with a flat face that reminds Dallas oddly of some kind of reptile and eyes that are too wide and that have a tendency to _stare_.

Like now.

Dallas feels the little hairs on the back of his neck prickle. "Er, Mr. Osborn," he says. "Hello. I – I didn't know you'd be here today."

Mr. Osborn straightens away from the desk, offers a bland smile that looks kind of like a frog opening its mouth to swallow a fly, and says, "I was looking for you, actually."

"Oh." Dallas tosses the sheets in the nearby laundry bin at his left and sets the broom back beside it. "All right, well, I'm finished here, sir, so..."

"Excellent." He glances down at Chuck. "See to it that our guest is returned to her bed."

Chuck nods and gets up fast to do what he's told while Dallas follows the boss down the quiet hallway and over to the elevator.

Dallas's insides start squirming.

As soon as the elevator door slides shut between them and Chuck, Mr, Osborn glances over and says, "What was that she was saying about 'my friend' and this guy'?"

Dallas swallows, but doesn't look away. "I'm not really sure, sir," he says. "She's – she was kind of out of it. Babbling. I – was just sort of humoring her." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "To be honest with you, Mr. Osborn, if she's going to be awake, I'd be more comfortable if you could have somebody else clean her room. I mean, I'll do it if I have to, but I'd rather not."

"That can be arranged." Osborn's bright eyes narrow. "She makes you nervous. Had you met her before?"

"No, sir," Dallas says. Mr. Synonym-for-Bleak hadn't allowed it. "Mr. Stark liked to keep the, um, the various aspects of his life separated. I'd never met either one of your, um, guests before."

There's a pause, and Dallas once again finds himself feeling like a bug under a microscope as Mr. Osborn stares down at him. "Stark never gave you a nickname, did he?"

"A-?" Dallas shakes his head. Feels himself begin to settle down. "Well. 'Hey You,' when he couldn't remember my name, but that was about it."

"Did you like working for him?"

"Yeah, actually, I did," Dallas admits. "Mr. Stark was kind of a pain, like working for a little kid half the time, but I was still working for _Tony Stark_. That was a big step up for me."

"You'd been working for your father before, correct?"

"Yes, sir," Dallas says, frowning. His dad had been Senior VP of Marketing for OsCorp. "Anyway, to go from being my dad's assistant to being the assistant to the CEO of one of the biggest companies on the planet, like I said, it was a big deal. So, I liked the _job,_ but Mr. Stark I could take or leave."

Mr. Osborn actually chuckles. "Have you spoken to your father?"

"Yes, sir. He's – uh, he's with my mom in Syracuse. I didn't tell him where I was."

That quick, Mr. Osborn does that weird shift where he goes from relaxed and smiling to intense and strange. He swings around and stares at Dallas like he's trying to bore holes in his head. "You'd swear to that?"

Dallas finds himself wanting to shrink back against the elevator wall. Instead, he holds his ground and meets Mr. Osborn's gleaming eyes without flinching. "I haven't said a word, sir, to anyone, as per your instructions. I'd swear to it."

Another of those forever pauses, and then, finally, Mr. Osborn nods. "Good. Keep it that way."

"Of course, sir. Was-? Was there something else you needed?"

Mr. Osborn turns to face forward again as the elevator glides to a stop on the sixth floor. "As a matter of fact," he says, "yes, I do. I have a couple of projects I would like you to undertake – people I need you to track down for me."

The elevator doors slide open and Dallas breathes out a quiet sigh, like letting go of a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. "Of course, sir. Anything I can do to help."

"Good," Mr. Osborn says as he steps out into another quiet, beige hallway. "And you needn't worry about cleaning up after Miss Romanov or Mr. Banner, Dallas, my boy. You'll be far too busy for that with your new projects."

"Thank you, sir," Dallas says with something like relief.

He's no stranger to guilt – not these days, at least – but he's made his choice, joined up with what he thinks is the winning team, and that's all there is to it.

At least Mr. Osborn knows his name.

Yeah, okay, maybe Mr. Stark's nickname for him was pretty cool, but so what?

This is the winning team.

And, he thinks as he hurries to catch up to Mr. Osborn, that's that.

_That's that._  
xXx

_No sense of time, really, out there in the gray; it is as it was in his prison cell: with nothing against which to measure it, time ceased to have any meaning._

_Sense of _waiting_, perhaps_

_Rather dull, if truth were told._

"If you knew this was limbo, then why ask?" _Loki notices for the first time that similar whisper-shout quality of his own voice-sound. Noticing again the green-gold-dark-cold feel of it; the sense that is real and imagined, everywhere and nowhere, inside and out_.

("Because that much was patently obvious. I was hoping you had some other insight to add.") _Black-red-hot _'sound,' _to Mephisto's 'voice' that reminds Loki of ripples in a pond. _("I hoped you had some idea what was waiting for us.")

"You assume something _is _waiting for us."

_Baiting, biting, and bothered with no idea why._

("Yes, I assume. Do you not feel it?")

"I do, and I have no more idea than you what it is."

_Bringer._

("You're lying.")

"Perhaps. You said we had met before, you and I."

("I misspoke.")

"Now who's lying? You said we had met in another when. What did you mean by that? Why were attempting to get my attention? Why open dimensional tears to do so? Why not simply come to me? Why were you working for Thanos?"

_A torrent of questions: siphoning off the bitterness, the boredom._

_Pushing it into the gray._

_Red-light flicker of amusement. _("Do you not know?")

"I would not have asked otherwise."

("Yes, you would have, if it suited your purposes.")

_Frustration like tiny gold sparks. _"I am asking because I do not remember."

_Long stretch of nothing, of emptiness, of two senses of _thereness_ in some immense ocean. No sense of time, of place, of anything, just...presence._

Nowness.

_And that other presence, dark and somehow rumbling. _("I thought you looked younger. Not that I got a terribly good look at you before you sicced your metal dog on me.")

"Metal dog." _Stark, of course: a gold-red thought, a faint, passing pang, one best not dwelt upon. _"What is it I do not remember?"

("Oh my, how the mighty _has_ fallen.")_ More than a flicker this time, and this shot through with something much darker. _("This is rich.")

"What is it I do not remember?"

("Nothing you need trouble yourself with now.") _Malevolence: a stab of pure black._ ("As for where we met before, it was another lifetime. Nothing whatever to do with this.")

"You are lying." _Cold-certain_.

("Yes,. And you can do nothing about it.")

"Now, perhaps. But in ti-"

"-_BRINGER_-!"

_Not so much a boom-whisper as an explosion of sound, a wall of noise that would be deafening even to immortal ears had they but had ears to hear._

_No time to even wonder what or why or how or where._

"-WE COME-!"

_Fear-worry in a flash: the gray is dimming, darkening, blackening._

_Sensation of everything – existence itself – closing in around him._

_Of horrible, horrifying _compression_, like every bit of him is being squeezed into the smallest possible space, like his being forced down to his very essence._

_Agony again._

_Not burning this time, but crushing._

_He does not scream. Cannot scream. Possesses nothing with which to scream._

_But he _is_ screaming._

_Is a scream._

_Is pain._

_Is the black._

_And then, and then..._

_Nothing at all._

xXx

Somewhere,

(_somewhen)_

Loki opens his eyes.

Sees nothing but blackness.

Hears a soft, hissing whisper: "Bringer."

And screams.

xXx

_What's coming through is alive  
__What's holding up is a mirror  
__What's singing songs is a snake  
__Looking to turn this piss into wine  
_

_They're both totally void of hate,  
__but killing me just the same_

-"H," Tool

A/N: So glad I finally got this chapter done. Y'all don't even _know_.

In case anybody didn't know, I had to re-post all my stories because a member of my family (who was mad at me), got into all my fiction accounts and deleted/wiped them. All of my document files got deleted as well, which is why it took an extra week for me to get this done. But fortunately, I have my notes

I'd like to just take a second to say a very HUGE thank you everybody on Tumblr, AO3, and everybody here on who came through with backup copies of my stories, who got me another AO3 invite, and who sent notes, hugs, and everything else. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: y'all are awesome. Thanks for reading!


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